Tell it to Sun.Star: Bongbong’s sins

INSTEAD of merely maintaining that he “will never apologize to the victims of the Marcos martial law regime,” Bongbong Marcos should now reply point-by-point to the “charge sheet” that CARMMA issued on Feb. 9, the start of the official campaign period for the 2016 national elections.

CARMMA-- the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang--was reacting to Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s statement during his proclamation in Ilocos Norte.

“Please do not anymore evade the truth by waxing philosophical or profound, as in ‘hindi ako, hindi ikaw ang nakaraan.’ For starters, please answer the six issues,” CARMMA dared Marcos Jr.

In a gathering of martial law victims last Feb. 4 in Quezon City, CARMMA initiators declared that they were against the vice-presidential bid of Bongbong Marcos “because he is not the guiltless son that he presents himself to be.”

Sin No. 1. The brazen lie that his father’s unbelievable wealth is legitimate. This, in the face of the stand by the Supreme Court defining the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family as those in excess of their total legal income, which was around $304,000 only from 1965 to 1986. Of the $10-billion fortune believed to have been amassed by the Marcoses through the years, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has managed to recover only about $4 billion.

Sin No. 2. Partaking of the fruits of the plunder of the Marcos conjugal dictatorship. While the sins of the father may not be passed on to the son, the son could very well inherit the ill-gotten wealth of the father. And Bongbong, together with the family, did inherit the fruits of the legendary Marcos plunder, much of which has yet to be uncovered, and which Bongbong will never reveal and give back to the people.

Bongbong, for 30 years, has been a mere salaried government official. How could the Marcos family live in style all these years? Where is his election fund coming from?

Sin No. 3. Whitewashing of the Marcos dictatorship’s crony capitalism, of which he had been a part. In 1985, when he was 26 years old, his father appointed him chairman of the board of the Philippine Communications Satellite Corp. (Philcomsat), receiving a monthly salary of anywhere between $9,700 to $97,000. This, despite that fact that he rarely even went to the Philcomsat office.

In 1986, government auditors would discover that Philcomsat was one of the many corporations and organizations used to siphon ill-gotten wealth out of the country.

Sin No. 4. Cover-up of the unprecedented plunder and economic sabotage that his father committed in the 21 years of his anti-people rule. Under the Marcos dictatorship, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line doubled from 18 million in 1965 to 35 million in February 1986. The dictator also left behind a staggering foreign debt of $27 billion.

This belies the claim of Bongbong that Filipinos were better off under the Marcoses.

Sin No. 5. Defending and promoting martial law that, in fact, caused Filipinos to suffer systematic, widespread, and state-sanctioned enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial executions. At least 3,000 were killed and more than 30,000 were detained, brutally tortured, raped, or suffered various forms of abuse.

Bongbong even had the gall to dismiss the 9,539 human rights victims in the Hawaii class suit and won the case against the Marcos estate as purely motivated by compensation. “Pera-pera lang ang habol ng mga iya,” he said.

As a reserve officer in the Philippine Army, Bongbong wore the military combat uniform when his father was sworn into office at the balcony of Malacañang after the dictator rigged the 1986 snap presidential elections. Bongbong upheld electoral fraud and was ready to defend the dictatorship by arms.

Sin No. 6. Complicity in the billion-peso Napoles pork barrel scam. He has a lot to explain about his allocation of P100 million for ghost nongovernment organizations of Janet Lim Napoles.--Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang
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